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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2024
Submitted to Contest #315
Danny’s mother, having almost cut the circulation off from her fingers, tied the final balloon and batted it across the living room to her son. “Right then Danny, your friends will be here soon. Go and wash your face and put on that clean shirt I’ve left on your bed.” “Okay mum!” Danny batted the balloon back at her as his mother returned to the kitchen to finish icing the dinosaur shaped birthday cake which she worried looked more like a duck than a diplodocus. “How many are coming?” Danny tore back down the stairs, fastening the buttons...
Submitted to Contest #314
The lost man stands on the hill, looking down into the once green valley. As the sun pushes through a thin blue sky, the morning mist gently dissipates, revealing the shape of the countryside for miles around. “Blessed,” murmurs the lost man as he wipes the ground’s dewy moisture from the side of his face. Behind him, on the plateau, a solitary tree shifts slightly in the small breeze that has drifted its way from the beck below to join the lost man on the hill. Its companion looks at his hard, calloused hands, holding them aloft to the sky....
Submitted to Contest #313
A spider only knows that you’re lying if the moon is in its first quarter and the cat’s milk has turned sour overnight. That’s what my great aunt always said when she suspected me of telling less than the facts. Though it always confused me as to the purpose of a spider and the divination of the truth. Six tall pine trees waved skywards towards their cloud companions that summer as I idled away the hours at my Great Aunt Dorothy’s large house. She was accompanying an elderly friend on a long desired excursion to Egypt and with no children of...
Submitted to Contest #312
Iris had never really been fond of living close to the park. In summer, the shouts of over-excitable children carried across the lawns and through her windows in uninvited echoes. And in winter, the trees turned skeletal and pointed, seeming to lean closer to the house, as if they wanted to come in rather than watch from outside through the twilight. But, regardless of those irritations, the place had still been her home and she supposed she would miss it when she left. The house itself was a modest post-war semi with a pebble-dashed front a...
Submitted to Contest #311
There’s an old swing that hangs from the branch of an ancient oak, deep in the wooded valley of Langtondale, nestled in England’s northern hills. Its ropes are brown and worn with age, smoothed by the hands of time. The wooden seat, sawn from the piano lid of some long dead child’s grandmother, is still sturdy and firm. It moves in tempo with the breeze that visits this small clearing by the river. And it is but the breeze and his more raucous cousin the wind, that now while away the hours in this secluded place.Not so many years have passed...
Submitted to Contest #310
Even at the age of nine, I knew there was something inexplicably different about Eugene Westcote. To all intents and purposes, he was a typical boy of our generation. Grubby knees, snotty nose, with a particular fondness for semolina pudding and lead-painted soldiers. But all that aside, a peculiar air would sometimes sweep over the boy, seemingly out of nowhere. His nature would take on a disturbing sort of other-worldliness. He would become ridiculously perpendicular, gaining inches in height, or it would appear so at least, and he would a...
Submitted to Contest #309
A dark marble tomb sits high on a gloomy knoll to the west of Darksford cemetery. Its distinctive edifice, carved with skilfully crafted words, glints in the sunlight on the rarest of fine days, when the rhododendron bushes part their leafy green hands and allow the unassuming passerby to catch a glance of the monolith that waits there. *** It was on one such day that George Godfrey, a writer of sorts and part time curator at the town’s library, was taking a purposeless meander through Darksford cemetery in search of something he knew not....
Submitted to Contest #308
The bear with red cherries for eyes grinned horribly as it carefully manicured its dreadful claws with the emery board discovered at the back of the bathroom cabinet.“All the creatures of far and beyond will play a part in your demise,” it whispered through fish-tainted breath.Damon reached for the fork but it wasn’t there. Forks were banned from the house, ever since the incident with his mother and the postman.The cherries glistened, full of demonic fruitiness. Damon grasped again, the back of his hand brushed the bottle of indigestion rem...
Submitted to Contest #307
It’s a warm Monday morning in early August, and Kyle Deans is feeling stuffy and uncomfortable in the uniform of his new school. The navy woollen blazer itches and his tie feels as though it’s cutting off his airways. The trousers are tight around his middle, and the shoes, brown brogues, polished within an inch of their life, squeak with every hesitant step, rubbing the back of his ankles. Kyle’s usual attire, grey Nike tracksuit, Air Max trainers and hoodie, is now hidden away in a locked black box, along with his phone, earbuds, and his i...
Submitted to Contest #306
Sunday 2nd MayThere was a dead mouse in the fridge this morning. A small brown furred one, all stiff and cold. It was laid on its back next to half a squeezed lemon, little paws pointing up towards the ice compartment. I think the mouse had squeezed the lemon into the last bottle of milk as that has gone completely sour and there won’t be any more until Alfred comes on Tuesday. I wrapped the mouse in an old floral tea-towel. I don’t think mum will mind. Then I buried it in the garden under the lilac tree. I think he will like it there. Patri...
Submitted to Contest #305
“You know what? I quit!” Jenny appeared at the kitchen door. “Quit what lovey? What is it exactly that you’re quitting?” The woman at the sink knew not to rise to her daughter’s sudden outbursts. Jenny stared at the back of her mother as though she was completely stupid. “You know. Life. This thing. The system. It’s what they say… I quit.” “Well, I suppose I might have said that a few times over the years but it’s not often that I’ve actually quit…“ Jenny’s mother paused, considering the scrambled egg encrusted saucepan that she’d be...
Submitted to Contest #304
Much is hidden beneath the velvet cloak of night. The dark manifestations as earth spins away from the sun and the quiet truths to which many close their eyes. But what of the dark? When all we regard with our daytime gaze becomes unfamiliar and strange, shrouded in a cloak of deepest hues, lit only by the celestial beings of the night. Those old friends and foe.I lift my head skywards. High above the old church tower, Orion takes his place. A constant nighttime companion through the turning of the calendar, retreating only when hidden benea...
Submitted to Contest #303
Miss Prim’s week was not going well. To start with, on Monday, the Dinsworth twins had bitten another teacher. Then on Tuesday her car refused to start outside Greypool primary school, and by Wednesday her caseload had reached an all time high. Every cup of tea was cold by the time she drank it and all she wanted was a few precious moments to herself. So when Mrs Truegood, her garlic and chickpea scented supervisor, called her in on Thursday morning with another new case, Miss Prim felt nothing but despair.“The red and white place near the s...
Submitted to Contest #301
They say that ‘hard work never sleeps’, but Louise hated working late, especially in the winter months when slumber seemed so much more essential, and she hurried to the station through the cold February air, the pavements slick with damp and city grime. All she wanted was the warmth of the train carriage and a quiet seat where she could let the familiar journey home numb her after a demanding day at the office. But as she reached her platform, Louise was dismayed to discover all the carriages full. The only empty seat she could find was...
Submitted to Contest #300
I’m coming back. You never thought I would, did you? I never thought I would. I was determined that I would never set foot in that place ever again. But something has changed and here I am. I’m coming back, and you’re never going to forget about me ever again. You can be certain of that. I’m sure you all thought that once I’d gone, that would be the end of it, once I’d left the old town and the stinking old bodies that existed there. Those lingering bodies that shuffled and meandered the worn old streets. Holding the same conversatio...
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